From: NSF
‘Belonging’ can help keep talented female students in STEM classes
National Science Foundation:
Many women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have faced a common experience at some point during their college days — they walked into a classroom and found that they were among a small handful of women in the class, or even the only one.
That kind of experience has the potential to make a talented, motivated student feel out-of-place, and compel her to search for more inclusive academic environments, according to Nilanjana Dasgupta, a psychology researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Questioning one’s sense of “belonging” in an academic environment may contribute to why women are significantly under-represented in some areas of STEM.
Dasgupta’s research, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE), identifies interventions or remedies that universities and other organizations can employ to increase women’s sense of belonging in STEM — even in cases where they are a small minority in the classroom among male peers.
Read the whole story: National Science Foundation
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Comments
This is one of the most interesting and well written paper about women and minorities how much they suffer from the feeling of being an outsider particularly in academic settings. I can relate to this very well. I remember having taken one courses in cognitive psychology with a class of forty female students in which I was the only male and minority. This is really an issue which every professor should know and pay attention to. Thank very much for your work.
Alex
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